Posture problems - Rounded shoulders

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One of the most common posture problems you see around is people with rounded shoulders. You can identify these people easily. They will be hunched over with a rounded upper back and their shoulders pulled forwards. It is a very common posture problem and can lead to back discomfort very easily.

There are a few reasons for this posture problem. Most postural problems are not inherited at birth. They are usually a direct result of some individual cause. With rounded shoulders in my opinion the biggest problem is your job. You will never see rounded shoulders from someone who has a job that requires them to be standing in a good postural position (take a soldier or guard for example), however if you have a normal desk job or if your job is writing, drawing, gardening brick laying etc then you could develop problems. A lot of people with desk jobs will develop round shoulders because of the position of their seat and their arms. Most office chairs are not very well designed to avoid this problem. The back position means that you will have to lean forwards with your shoulders to type on the keyboard or do whatever it is that you do at your desk. This constant bad position will start to develop the bad posture as tendons get tighter and your pectorals tighten up as well. Imagine after a long journey in the car, when you get out you feel tight and have to stretch your legs. If you were in the car for this journey day in day out and didn’t stretch your legs, your legs may end up getting so tight they are almost stuck in that seated position. This is sort of what happens with rounded shoulders. Very few office workers will do regular pectoral stretches.

Another large reason for rounded shoulders or any kind of postural problems is incorrect training. If you are overworking your pectorals and not training the antagonistic muscles to a great enough degree then you will develop rounded shoulders. Your pectorals will pull your shoulders forwards so you have to work muscles like your rhomboids, traps and rear delts to pull them back into the correct position. Knowing this we can start to rectify the problems or this bad posture by simply training correctly. By stretching the pectorals regularly and working the muscles that will help pull the shoulders back we can achieve a correct posture relatively quickly.

So here are a few things for you to add to your routine if you struggle with rounded shoulders.